


sun will come (we will find our way home)

by vanillarouge



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drabbles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Post-Sburb, platonic smooching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillarouge/pseuds/vanillarouge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You love him like you love a friend, like you love a brother except not exactly —because you didn’t choose Dave but you chose John.</p><p>(Two lost kids at the end of the world, presented in three acts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sun will come (we will find our way home)

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of drabbles written for mine sams maxs and lainys RP group/timeline on tumblr: [davidstrider](davidstrider.tumblr.com) & [rosellelalonde](rosellelalonde.tumblr.com) & [jonathanegbert](jonathanegbert.tumblr.com) & [jadineharley](jadineharley.tumblr.com), that we lovingly call fullnamestuck.
> 
> Mentions of "other Johns" exist because multiple timelines are able to interact.

**i.**

**my dear old friend, take me for a spin.**

John is wary like a stray cat, and mournful like a rainy morning, and you’re getting used to pretending not to notice the way he flinches when you touch him.

You think you remember a time when there was nothing to you both but never-ending Skype video calls on school nights, and past two-in-the-mornings trading of silly YouTube cat videos, and late-night chats about the hypothetic logistics of running away from home and starting a new life with the Circus — but your memories are all hazy, like the dream of a dream of a life that the two of you have long ago left behind.

You’re no longer naïve kids with bright smiles and bright futures. You’re four skinny teenagers living in a house too big and too empty for you, parentless and lonely, subsisting on minimum wages and market coupons.

Because the Game fucked you up, and life torn you apart, and now that you’re finally together once again —together and broken, but together all the same— you realize you can’t remember how this used to work out; the two of you.

And it breaks your heart, doesn’t it, Rose?

Just a little.

The house is cold, so cold, and you can’t remember how or why, but you and John have ended up curled together in the sofa watching old re-runs of Twin Peaks and trying to make yourselves comfortable in the middle of John’s two million cats. You put your arms around him and he sighs against your neck under heavy knitted blankets, seven dozen layers of something that feels a little like home; sharing warmth like you’re the last kids on earth and you’re dying of hypothermia.

He laughs at something on the telly, and it’s a quiet rumble in his chest, and then a soft brush of your lips against his lips becomes a slow kiss, closed-mouthed, naïve and sweet; your smile against his smile, his breath against your breath.

And it’s the warmth rather than the touch that’s keeping you together, like magnets and unspoken agreements; secretive little laughs and whispers, and silly sweet nothings being murmured inside the safeness of your blanket fort.

Because John is still your John, and you like to see him smile, and you like the way his eyes light up when he talks, and you like how he hums to himself, so quietly, when he thinks nobody’s nearby.

And so you cup his face in your hands and press your forehead against his and try to imprint a message on his mouth, a message that tastes a little like  _I missed you_ , and _I believe in you_ , and _I’m willing to learn again_.

;;

ii.

 **if you should fall upon hard times, if you should lose your way.  
** ( _there is a place, here in this house, that you can stay_ )

You walk into the bathroom like you’re getting used to calling this house your home, your hand steady on the handle, saying, “John, have you seen my—”

And then you stop.

You can’t tell why, exactly, because it feels more like an ultimatum: Your body refusing to move a single muscle, an extensive pause of your being — words, steps, breath, heart. Stop.

John is sitting in the bathtub fully-clothed and soundless and motionless, quiet and still. His gaze is lost somewhere before him, and the water goes up to his shoulders, and he hugs his knees and curls up in angles that are far too familiar to you to know that he aches.

He says, “go away,” and his is voice is small, lips quivering, and it’s enough to break your heart. “Just go away.”

The tub is filled to the brim and his hair sticks to his face in strange drying patterns.

“No,” you whisper, calmly. You wouldn’t want to startle him. What he needs now is to be left alone, what you should do is leave him alone.

But you couldn’t stand leaving him like this; cold and broken and shivering and lost.

And so you step into the tub along him and smile a little when he scoots over, and your clothes drench and become heavy, and the water is freezing cold and it makes your teeth chatter; and as your toes curl you wonder, if a little wistfully, if it ever was warm in the first place. “I don’t really feel like going anywhere as of now.”

Your fingers, still dry, find their way to his cheek and you realize how strong was the need to touch him, you realize that you show affection through touch, but John doesn’t understand it, any of it; the need, the love, the touch.

His face is cold and so are your hands, but he still leans in. Mutters, “if we both get sick, it’ll be your fault.”

But you see the corners of his mouth lift up slightly, before he fixes his face once again into what you’re quickly realizing is a permanent scowl, like this is his default now.

You simply press a little closer, and he leans his head on your shoulder, and you close your eyes, and you touch his hair, and you kiss his forehead and try to tell him with no words that he never has to be alone.

;;

  **Haunt.**  v.tr.  _haunt·ed, haunt·ing, haunts_.

To be continually present in; pervade:  _the melancholy that haunts the composer’s music_.

;;

**iii.**

**may your past be the sound, of your feet upon the ground.  
** ( _carry on_ )

John doesn’t change, John is a constant.

Steady, persistent, continuous. Faithful, loyal, true. John is a constant.

Do you remember having to wear a band-aid on each one of your fingers when you were learning to sew and knit because he wouldn’t shut up about that bunny he wanted _so_ much? You showed him your plump twelve year old fingers through the webcam with pride, and he called them beautiful.

Through everything you went through and back, John has always been there — he saw you at your worst, in your most basic state of mind: Obsessive and revengeful and powerful, dark-skinned and terrible and horrible and uninhibited.

He brought you back to life all the same.

Do you remember when he was in the bathtub a few weeks after you moved in with the boys, fully-clothed and cold and shivering, salty tears drying on his cheeks, and you should have left but you felt something ugly in your chest scrunch, and you felt like you were fainting, and you felt the need to reach out and touch him, and you felt like you had to protect him, and you let him rest his head on your shoulder, and nothing was solid?

You ran your fingers through his hair and sang to him lullabies from your childhood with your teeth chattering from the cold and your fingertips wrinkling from the water, and you were both sick for a week afterwards, and you did it because you love him.

You love him like you love a friend, like you love a brother except not exactly —because you didn’t choose Dave but you chose John— you chose to remember that he likes putting his shirts on right after you pull them out of the dryer, to remember that he smiles absently when he blogs about Dave and scrunches his nose up when he pets the cats, that he likes his toast with butter and his coffee black and sugary.

And so you walk down the stairs with your socks on and a blanket wrapped around you and your laptop in your hands, silently silently; slumping down beside him on the couch and curling your legs against your chest, letting your weight fall heavily onto his side.

He says, “what the hell,” and you don’t look at him and he doesn’t look at you, but there’s a smile in his voice, and it sounds almost like a greeting.

“A you is being mean on the internet,” you say as way of replying, and you feel his head resting on top of yours as you fall in comfortable silence, and there are a million Johns out there that you could not care less about, because none will ever haunt you quite so lovingly as yours does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Slow and Steady — Of Monsters and Men.   
> Deadline & Commitments — The Killers.  
> Carry On — fun.
> 
> ([tumblr mirror](http://missvanillamilkshake.tumblr.com/post/48711894381/sun-will-come-we-will-find-our-way-home))
> 
> (whispers comments are really nice, yo)


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